by Tara Pammi
But, every once in a while, especially when she was being jostled around by typical New Yorkers in Manhattan, suddenly she would spot a well-dressed man—usually in an expensive three-piece suit, his hair jet-black, his profile sharp—and just like that, her heart would crash to a complete stop.
The masses of people around her, the noise, the decadent scents of food and sometimes the nauseous scents of decay, the honk of horns, the chatter in different languages flying back and forth...everything would melt away. She’d still, even with the wind biting her cheeks, and crane her neck to locate that tall man. Every molecule in her body thrumming with hope that maybe, this time, it was not some stranger, not some executive, but Dante.
It happened a dozen times, a hundred times, and yet, she fell for it every single time. Hope, excitement and then the crash of disappointment, followed by such a paralyzing ache in her chest.
She went through her day, meeting with John Carter’s team, trying different restaurants in Manhattan and midtown, just living. Slowly, she would build herself back up and then she would spot someone again.
It was a vicious loop that she seemed to be stuck in.
She couldn’t wait to leave New York. But Mr. Carter’s assistant had only informed her this morning the trip had been indefinitely delayed.
No reason had been given and Ali, for once too distracted, hadn’t even asked for it.
In the first week, she’d realized that the scale of these trips was beyond what she’d initially imagined. The logistics were mind-boggling. The question left to her was whether she should stay in New York or go back to London.
New York, her aching heart whispered immediately.
Because New York was an ocean away from him.
Because, as much as it pained her to keep looking for him in a crowd where he would never be, at the end of the day, she had lived through another day without breaking down. Without calling him just to hear his voice.
Without jumping onto a flight back to London to beg him to take her back. On whatever terms.
She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t always be the one reaching out. Couldn’t live with the constant choke hold of worry about what would make him shut down.
Whereas London was full of memories. She wasn’t sure she even had the strength to walk away again. It had been hard enough to do it the first time. Pulling her coat together, Ali checked the street sign and sighed. Finally, she had made it to the Plaza.
She’d stay another week and then decide. Right now, it was time to join the living.
She forced herself to smile as she pulled the glass door open.
It wasn’t Christmas yet but she knew Christmas parties abounded everywhere.
It would be nice to see the people she would be working with over the next eighteen months. It would be nice to forget the man she had left behind for at least a couple of hours.
She inquired at the reception desk and was directed to a suite on the twentieth floor.
Since the receptionist had immediately turned away to take a call, Ali swallowed her question and made her way to the bank of elevators. She checked her hair in the mirror and straightened the sweater dress she’d worn over black leggings.
In no time, she was knocking on the door. Something didn’t feel right. She almost turned away just as the door opened and there was Dante.
A barrage of emotions came at Ali, knocking the very breath out of her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
But she didn’t wait for his answer.
She turned away but didn’t really make it far before he grabbed her arm and pulled her into the suite and closed the door behind her.
After two months, after searching for that beautiful face in every stranger, the sight of him rocked the ground from under her. Stole her breath. He was wearing a chunky sweater and dark jeans.
Two or three days’ worth of beard covered his jaw, giving him a dangerous quality. Hiding that sensual mouth. His eyes glinted with some secret agenda, his shoulders stiff with tension.
In fact, he didn’t look like the remote, coldhearted man she’d left behind at all. He looked distracted, rumpled, a little bit broken, as if he were human after all. As if despite his best efforts, she had left a little mark on him.
“Buongiorno, Alisha.” His gaze swept over her sweater dress clinging to her breasts. A fire licked in his eyes. “You look good enough to eat, cara mia. I missed you. Dios mio, how I have missed you.”
Even with the chill from outside still clinging to her skin, those husky words instantly warmed her up. The emotion ringing in them was a slap to her senses.
She wasn’t going to engage with him. She wasn’t going to get into a fight. She didn’t want to spend a minute more than necessary with him, because at the rate her heart was beating, she was going to collapse on the bed and beg him to give her mouth-to-mouth. “I don’t have anything to say to you. Nothing new to negotiate. In fact—” her throat filled with tears “—I take back what I offered. I won’t give up this opportunity of a lifetime for you. You don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve me, Dante.”
A bleakness entered his eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, his only tell that he wasn’t quite put together. “I deserved that.”
“Stop agreeing with me. Stop telling me you missed me. Just...stop.”
“Don’t cry, cara mia. I promised I wouldn’t hurt you. I just want a conversation with you. Just half an hour of your time, Ali. Then you can walk out of here. I won’t stop you.”
Slowly, the shock of seeing him faded, and reality sank in. “Wait, I don’t understand. How are you here?”
“I took the jet this morning.”
Why was he playing with her like this? Letting her tote fall down to the floor, she leaned against the bed. She rubbed a hand over her forehead. “Why are you here, at the Plaza? John’s assistant told me the team was meeting for Christmas drinks.”
“That was me. I had John postpone the trip too.”
Shock pulsed through her. “What? Why?”
“I had a lot of things to see to. Paperwork...”
“Paperwork, of course. What is it this time, Dante? What else requires signing? What else do you want from me? Because I have nothing left to give you. Nothing.”
“Ali, I know I’ve—”
“This is not fair. I...I can’t do this again and again. I can’t walk away from you over and over. Don’t play games with me.”
“I’ve never played games with you. Not once. Not even in my dreams.”
His fingers clasped her chin in a firm hold, his eyes boring into her. He studied her as if she were dessert after a fast. As if he were parched for the taste of her. “I...told John that I want to join the team. But I need a month or two at least to get things in good shape at the company. I can’t just... If I need to give this my all—and I desperately want to—I need to make sure there are contingencies in place, in case the teams can’t get to me immediately.
“I made three trips to Tokyo to make sure there were no problems with the production line. He twisted my arm of course, until I made a huge donation. But like you said, what’s the whole point of being a billionaire if you can’t bribe your wife’s boss to wait until you can beg her forgiveness? To wait so that I can join her before she disappears for eighteen months and leaves my heart broken? Because it has been, cara mia. Without you...”
Hands on her hips, he dragged her to him until she was pressed up against him from chest to thighs. Shaking and shuddering, he was a fortress of heat and desire around her. Relief, it was relief that gripped him, she realized. “I kept dreaming that you had left before I could get to you. I’ve never felt so powerless...not since the polizia came to take Papa away. You were right. What I suggested wasn’t a compromise at all. Dios mio, one eighteen-month stint is bad enough. If you left me like that again... I’m sorry for not realizing the value
of what you gave me. I’m sorry for hurting you so much. For being so...”
His mouth trailed soft kisses all over her face, down her jaw, onto her neck until her pulse was in his lips. Shock and pleasure and hope—all collided with each other in her chest, vying for the upper hand.
Pleasure won and she clung to him like a limp doll, willing him to take her mouth without having to beg for it. Rough hands snuck under her blouse, branding her bare skin.
Words came and fell away from her mouth and Ali stared, hope fluttering its wings in her chest.
She gasped when Dante sank to his knees and buried his face in her belly. Dark eyes, shimmering with wetness, looked up at her. “I’m going with you, just not immediately. Do this trip and return to London or not. Do a hundred trips for the rest of our lives and don’t return to London. I don’t care. As long as we’re together.”
“Are you sure? This is not a transaction.” A sob racked through her. “It’s not a condition to love you. To be with you. It’s not... If you ask me to leave with you to return to London today, now, I will. I just... I need to love you in my own way, Dante. Even if you don’t. Even if you—”
When she would have interrupted him, he nipped her, effectively silencing her. “I’m in love with you, cara mia. We will travel the world so that you can take more of those powerful photographs. We will live like nomads if that’s what you want. Our kids will travel with us if that’s what you want. We’ll never return to London again. Never buy a home. We’ll do it all your way.”
Ali sank to her knees and burrowed into him. “No. All I wanted was for you to take a step toward me. To let me love you like I want to. To love me back just a little.”
“I love you a lot,” he said and utter joy spread through her.
“I will make my home with you, wherever you are, Dante. You’re my home, don’t you see? Always, you’ve been the place I can land, the person I can love. You’re everything to me.”
Dante picked his wife up in his arms, his heart bursting with love for his wife.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed Sicilian’s Bride for a Price you’re sure to enjoy these other Conveniently Wed! stories!
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by Tara Pammi
Bound to Her Desert Captor
by Michelle Conder
The Greek’s Bought Bride
by Sharon Kendrick
Claiming His Wedding Night Consequence
by Abby Green
Bound by a One-Night Vow
by Melanie Milburne
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Her Forgotten Lover’s Heir
by Annie West
CHAPTER ONE
SHE WOKE TO a sense of disorientation.
Blinking, she took in the dimly lit room. The visitor’s chair, bedside table and small window. Now she knew where she was. Rome. The hospital they’d brought her to after she’d been knocked down on the street.
Yet, instead of feeling calmer, her pulse quickened. The sense of disorientation didn’t ease. How could it when everything beyond this room was a blank?
Her name.
Her nationality.
What she was doing in Rome.
She didn’t recall anything.
Impulsively, she reached out to the bedside table, fingers running over the small comb and vanilla lip-balm that were the only possessions she could call her own. Her clothes had been so torn and bloodied they were unwearable and whatever bag or wallet she’d carried was missing.
She shut her eyes, forcing her breathing to slow. Forcing down the fear at not knowing anything.
After all, she did know some things.
She wasn’t Italian. She spoke English, with only a smattering of tourist Italian.
She was in her twenties. Pale-skinned with regular, if ordinary, features. She had grey-blue eyes and tawny hair that looked limp after the blood had been washed out.
And she was pregnant.
Her breath hissed in as she struggled with fear at the thought of being pregnant, nameless and alone.
The amnesia would pass. The doctors were hopeful. Well, most of them were hopeful. She was determined to cling to that. The alternative was too horrible to contemplate. She’d feel better in daylight when the medical staff bustled around the ward. Even the continual barrage of tests would be a welcome change from lying here, utterly alone and...
Something tugged at her senses. The hairs on her nape rose and her skin tickled with the awareness someone was watching her.
Slowly, since quick movement made her head ache, she turned towards the door.
She blinked, then blinked again. Wasn’t it enough that her memory was shot? Had she begun hallucinating too?
In the shadowed doorway stood a man who surely didn’t belong here. Tall, broad-shouldered and lean enough to wear his dark suit to elegant perfection, he looked like a model for designer menswear. That square jaw, the hint of a groove low in each cheek and those soaring cheekbones were all ultra-masculine and stunningly attractive.
A fillip of emotion stirred in her belly. Surprise, obviously. And attraction. As a distraction from self-pity he was perfect—the epitome of the ‘tall, dark and handsome’ cliché.
Except, as he stepped into the room, she discovered he wasn’t anything so simple as a pretty face.
There was an underlying toughness about him that made her skin prickle. He was the sort of guy who made designer stubble sexy instead of effete. His nose was strong rather than suave and his eyes hinted at shrewd, calculating intelligence. His height made him dominate the room and the effect was magnified when he stopped by her bed.
She tilted her head up, heart pounding.
‘Who are you?’ It seemed vital she sound calm, though everything inside her quickened.
Maybe he was some fancy consultant. That might explain his lack of bedside manner. No cheery smile, no platitudes about time being a great healer. No stethoscope. She couldn’t picture anything so mundane draped over that superbly fitted suit.
His eyes bored into hers and she saw now why they looked so unusual. They were brown flecked with gold and glowed with an inner fire, their colour unexpected given his olive skin and dark hair.
His silent scrutiny made her uncomfortable. ‘I said—’
‘You don’t rememb
er me?’ His voice was honey and whisky, velvet and steel, and it would have made her hang on his every word even if he’d recited from a phone book. But when he implied...
She scrambled to sit up then winced as the movement made her head pound.
‘Are you all right? Should I call someone?’
Not a doctor, then.
‘Should I remember you? Have we met?’
Something she couldn’t identify flared in those golden eyes.
‘Do you know me?’ She leaned towards him, silently pleading for him to say he did.
Someone somewhere held the key to her identity.
‘I—’
There was a bustle in the doorway and one of the doctors entered. The chubby one with the kind eyes who’d reassured her when the fear she’d never regain her memory had grown close to terror. He burst into excited Italian, questioning the man at the bedside. The stranger responded, those grooves in his cheeks more pronounced, as if carved by concern. Back and forth they talked, the doctor voluble, the stranger answering with terse responses.
As if she weren’t there!
‘Can one of you please explain who this man is and why he’s here?’
Instantly the doctor turned towards her. Which was when she registered that the tall stranger hadn’t once taken his eyes off her. Even as he’d spoken with the medico his scrutiny of her had been constant.
She shivered, pulling the light cotton blanket higher up her body.
There was something about the intensity of his regard that made her feel naked. Not simply naked beneath the flimsy hospital gown, but as if he could strip her character back to the private self she kept hidden from the world.
Which was completely fanciful, as she had no idea what sort of person she was! If he could read her innermost character... Good—maybe he could enlighten her!
‘My apologies.’ It was the doctor who spoke. ‘We should have spoken in English.’ Then he smiled, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. ‘But we have excellent news for you.’